Cycling around a corner with the inside pedal down.  Running downhill at mile 7 of the half marathon.  Trying to lift two brood boxes and a lid off a hive by myself.  Ha!

My plan had been to disturb the bees as little as possible by removing the screened bottom boards early in the morning. We had cut them down to reduce the entrance but now the feeders I bought won't fit.  David and I are going to build new ones and I wanted to have the old ones to use as a guide.


Those poor, poor bees.  Demeter ended up on the ground with the second brood box practically on it's side, bee spilling out all over and getting very upset and flying about, buzzing very angrily.

I got Demeter put back together
and propped the screened board against the front of her stand so the bees could walk up into the hive (see the photo above).

The photo on the left is Artemis.  No huge disaster here.  I took off the lid and the top box off first and set them on a bench.  Then I took off the bottom box (which was rather heavy, hopefully being full of brood and honey) and sat that on top of the other parts.  It was easy to pull off the mangled bottom board.  You can see how I propped it up in front of the hive.







The photo on the right shows some of the carnage I inflicted on my sweet bees.

I have learned another lesson.